When We Fall
by wolfbones17
Summary: AU. Jack doesn't stop at the phone calls. Post season 7, pre season 8. Rated T for language.
1. Chapter 1

I shouldn't be doing this. Damn it. She doesn't want to talk to me, so what makes me think she'll see me? In the same instant, I know that I don't care. Renee Walker is going through the same Hell that I have been through. Different reasons, same Hell. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let her go through it alone.

As I head up the stairs of a dumpy apartment complex, I wonder…why? Why her, why now, why this? Of all the people I've lost, of all the people who've shut me out, why am I dead set on kicking her door in if I have to, in order to find her again? I only knew the woman for one day. Just one. But I can't get her out of my mind. She made virtually no sense to me for more than half of that day – first aloof and disapproving, then down and dirty with the rest of us. First slapping me, twice, then shaking in my arms. First hating me, then… Well. I'm sure she cared about me to some degree. She wouldn't have swooped in to disarm the bomb strapped to my chest if she didn't; she would have, instead, sprinted to a safe distance like I told her to.

I shake my head and start eyeing the doors as I walk down the halls. 21B. 23B. 25B.

And then I'm standing there. 27B. The solid door seems to loom defensively, or maybe I'm imagining things because I know she doesn't want anything to do with me. Yeah, I'm imagining things. Inanimate objects don't show emotion. They have no living faces to express emotions with. Only living things do.

There's a world of knowledge to be had in people's expressions. There is no way to create a perfectly fabricated expression. The human body doesn't work like that. Even the best actor in the world can't replicate an expression perfectly. You have to truly feel it to make it real. I can tell when a terrorist isn't afraid to die for his cause. I can tell when someone is feeding me a bald-faced lie. It's not what I see or what I want to see – it's what I feel, what I sense. Some third sense lifts its head and snarls when someone doesn't lie well enough to go undetected, and then I rip into the problem and hunt down the real answer.

But even I can't foresee what expressions will play on Renee's face when she sees me, what emotions she'll have. I can't even foresee if she'll open the damn door, or leave me to rot in the hall. But I have to find out, because if she lets me in, I'll get exactly what I want, and if she doesn't…what's one more stab of pain to my feelings, when every ounce of my flesh, mind and soul has already been tattered a hundred times before?

I knock on the door.

* * *

The knock jolts me out of my stupor. I'd been staring at the plant on the windowsill…for who the hell knows how long. It's just as yellow as it was when I remember feeling alive last, so I can't have been out of it for long. Besides, I remember now: I went to work today.

I can't seem to muster the hatred for the person on the other side of the door, whoever the sorry bastard is. They've interrupted my pity-party. Oh well. Whatever they want, they can shove it up theirs, since I don't care enough to do it myself.

They knock again. Well, hell. They're not going to go away if I ignore them. Since I'm aware of myself, I might as well see what they want. I get up and go to the door, not bothering to grab the gun in the kitchen drawer. Who cares if it's a robber or a hitman or whatever? So they'll kill me. My fingers flutter over the bandage on my wrist.

…It's nothing I haven't tried before.

I don't look in the peephole. I just slide open the deadbolt – the door was locked out of habit, I'm sure, rather than concern for safety – and open the door. I stare at the body in front of me. Who are you, what do you want, how long will it take to convince you to go away?

"Renee?"

The gravelly voice yanks my vision into focus, and for the first time in months, I see him. Holy crap. Jack Bauer.

I believed he was alive. I knew. The messages were proof enough for me. I didn't even need to have someone else confirm their existence, that I wasn't hallucinating. I pressed the button, I heard the recording, I knew the voice, and I didn't question it further.

But believing and _knowing_ are two different things. Seeing him…Oh. My gaze travels from his worried eyes down his lean body. He stands there, so strong. Tense. Like he was before the bioweapon. He looks alive.

Well, good. One of us ought to.

"Not dying looks good on you, Jack," I say, my voice hoarse from silence.

His face smiles around worried eyes. The smile deepens the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, framing them. "Thank you," he says softly.

I don't have words to speak, but I'm not…I'm not as willing to dismiss him like I would have dismissed anyone else. I run one hand ragged through my hair, and then step back, opening the door more widely. With the lazy wave of the same hand, I motion him inside.

He pauses so long that I expect him to excuse his madness and flee far, far away, when he nods and steps inside.

I close the door behind him. Jack Bauer. Jack Bauer is in my apartment. I try the thought on for size. It feels foreign. I should hate him. He gave me the key to my own destruction.

But I can't hate him. I can only hate myself. Because he may have given me the key, but I'm the one that slid it into the lock, and turned it.

* * *

Writer's Note: I'm not quite done with this one. :) I will be posting the next chapter of _Redemption _in the next few days - I haven't forgotten it, I promise! Meanwhile, this was a tidbit that just sort of meandered to the forefront of my brain, so I thought I'd post it. The next chapter for this story will be up sometime after the next chapter of _Redemption_. Thanks for sticking with me, folks. Hope you enjoy this one. :)


	2. Chapter 2

"I…ahm…think I have some coffee. Want some?" I run my fingers through my hair again, looking down as I head into the kitchen. Suddenly, I'm very much aware of the dirty dishes piled on the counter, the newspapers stacked on the table, unread, and the overflowing trash bin. I should be more ashamed about the state of my apartment, but why bother? It's just reflecting my own state of mind.

"Sure," he says quietly. He's only spoken a few words, and yet, that voice sounds so familiar, like I last heard it yesterday. It has this heavy ring to it when he speaks softly, unlike the authoritative ring it has when there's an emergency and he knows he's right.

There's half a pot of coffee left, but it's yesterday's coffee. I take the pot and dump it out, and then I put grounds in a coffee filter and shove it into the machine. To my credit, at least there aren't flies buzzing around. "Have a seat," I say. If you can find one.

I guess that's a little unfair. Only half of the couch has jackets and sweaters piled on it.

Jack pulls out the kitchen chair and moves the dirty socks onto another chair with an air of casualty, as though leaving one's dirty socks on a chair is perfectly normal. I have to give him credit – he's hiding the disgusted shock well. "How have you been?" he asks.

I turn back to the coffeemaker and put the pot back under it. "Let's not beat around the bush, Jack. You know how I've been, or you wouldn't be here." I jab the "start" button and turn around, leaning against the counter. My shoulder blades knock into a cup, sending a plate, spoons, and forks clashing into the sink.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he says. Dipped eyebrows, a quiet "huff" and his half-smile betray his mask of casualness.

"C'mon, Jack. I read your file. I read every published material with your name on it. You have a serious 'knight in shining armor' complex."

"Oh, really."

"Kate Warner. Claudia Hernandez. Audrey Raines. Am I damsel in distress number four?"

His eyes flash, and I know I went too far with Audrey's name. Well, I'm a bitch. A sloppy, careless, hurtful bitch. If you go to a bitch's apartment, you can't expect her to put on her sweet-nanny button-down dress and expect to exchange pleasant small talk over tea and cake.

But the flash of anger disappears as quickly as it came. "Is that what you think you are, Renee? A damsel in distress?"

Normally, his calm, collected, superior attitude would be seriously grating. But I don't care. "Well, I'm not Wonder Woman."

"So, you think that if you're not a superhero, you're automatically some weak, ditzy female that needs to be rescued?"

"God, Jack." I rub my forehead. "Why are you here?" He raises an eyebrow. "Well, I know _why_ you're here…but seriously, why?" Because, yes, he does have a serious hero complex, but somehow, that doesn't feel…it doesn't feel like a complete explanation.

"Why do you think I'm here?"

"To save the weak, ditzy damsel in distress," I retort.

He gets up and seconds later, he's standing a foot away from me. "You're not a weak, ditzy damsel in distress, Renee. But you do need saving."

* * *

She huffs and looks around, avoiding my gaze for a moment. Then she looks at me and says, "So you're going to save me, huh?"

"I can't save you," I say. "You have to save yourself."

She laughs bitterly. "You sound like some tragic kung fu master from a bad drama flick."

I feel my lips twitch, and I give her a small smile. "Yeah, I guess that was a little cheesy. But that doesn't make it any less true."

"Uh-huh."

"Renee, I know where you are. I've been there."

"I'm sure," she says.

"Renee."

"So your treatment went well," she says.

Avoiding the issue isn't going to make anything better, but I bite the inside of my cheek. I let her change the subject this once, and I'll probably do it again. Because I lost track of the number of times I blocked issues, changed subjects, avoided friends. "Yes, it did," I say.

"Good. Kim's all right, too." It's not a question.

"She's fine. They only had to harvest the stem cells from her once. They froze them and then used them as they needed." I had to go through several treatments before everything started to work, more or less, like it did before.

Renee just nods, and I feel the need to continue. "She stayed in D.C. with me during my recovery." I smile. "She has a daughter, Renee. A little baby girl, about two years old."

"That's great." Her voice sounds sincere, but her eyes remain hollowed and distant. I can barely recognize her. Her situation I recognize and remember, but…she's so thin. A thin layer of makeup hides the dull, pale skin tone I'm sure it'd have otherwise.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" she asks.

"For what's happened to you."

Renee blinks and steps around me. "It's not your fault," she says, not entirely convincing. "I made my own choices that day, Jack."

"You wouldn't have made those choices without my influence."

She snorts. "What? Those are excuses you make for a five year old that says 'shit' and 'damn' because she hears her older brother say them, not for a forty-year-old with a college degree and life experience under her belt."

"Life experience, field experience – there's a difference."

"I've had both."

"Not as much as I have," I say.

She turns around, waving her arms. "What, and that's supposed to make it okay? There, there, Renee, it was your first time torturing someone, you haven't tortured nearly as many people as Jack Bauer has, so you can have a little silver star?"

"No," I say. "Nothing makes any of what we do okay."

"Then how are _you_ okay?"

* * *

To my shock, my voice cracked on that last word, and tears start flowing down my cheeks. No sobbing, no shacking, no hysterics, just a steady stream of tears. They drop from my jaw to one of my last crisp, white shirts from work; I didn't have any clean home-clothes to change into. I really should do laundry someday.

Jack steps up to me again, and palms my cheek lightly. His thumb swipes at the tears, but the river just keeps flowing around it. "Your eyes need wiper blades," he says, swiping his thumb back across until it bumps my nose.

That absurd comment makes me chuckle once against his hand. "I don't think God or nature or…whatever the hell created us really foresaw me fucking up my life."

"You didn't fuck up your life," he says. "You entered one bad stage in this one point in your life. Things will get better."

"Really." Yeah, right.

"Really," he says gently, with an almost urgent edge. "Renee, I didn't get to be where I am now overnight. I've been in a lot of dark spots in my life."

"Maybe you only had one, and you just fooled yourself into thinking you were fine again," I say quietly. Oh, god. Don't go there, Walker. Just don't. Numbness is better than that. I have to say, I have a newfound understanding of alcoholics. I wonder what they went through? Did they get so tired of avoiding their issues and fighting against the memories that the only way to fend them off anymore was to get too drunk to think? Maybe I should pick up some rum or tequila later…

"Maybe," he says. "But my point is, you're going to hurt, and hate, and want to die. But once you get past that…you'll be okay."

"If you say so…" I'm not convinced.

"Do you trust me?" he asks.

The question truly baffles me. "Of course." He's one of the most trustworthy people I know. Well, all undercover pseudo-treason aside. I might regret everything else I did that day, but I don't regret trusting him.

"Then trust me on this." He takes my hand in his. I didn't realize how cold my fingers are until his touched mine. He seems to realize it, too, because he takes his other hand and cocoons mine between them, rubbing gently. His warmth to my cold. His stable to my wreck. How cliché.

As my fingers start to warm, I discover that the cliché doesn't bother me.

* * *

Writer's Note: I hope you liked chapter 2. :) Redemption ch. 36 is up, and considerably fluffier than this, if you want something lighter to counterbalance the heavy stuff depicted here. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

I reach for the other hand, too. They're soft, but stiff from cold. I almost have them warmed up when she looks away and tugs them back. "So, you're a grandfather," she says. She smiles as she turns, walking back over to the sink. She runs the water, her fingertips under the spout as though feeling for the temperature. She's going to do dishes _now_?

"Yeah."

"Your granddaughter…what's her name?"

"Teri." I pause, and then add, "Kim named her after her mother." My late wife. It's incredible, but I've finally reached a point where I feel that loving remembrance of Teri first, before I feel the hate of Nina Myers for taking her away from me. I open my mouth and I almost say this, but I stop short with "It's incredible" halting on the tip of my tongue. This isn't about my problems, or my life. It's about Renee's.

"That's nice."

Steam starts to rise around the tap…and Renee's fingers. "Renee! Watch it!" I rush forward and yank her hand back. I shut the water off as an afterthought, my mind preoccupied with the twitching, blistered index and middle fingers. "Renee, you have to pay attention!" I say, sighing.

It suddenly strikes me that I'm more likely to have my ass thrown out the door than to win her cooperation if I scold her like a child. Before I can apologize, she tugs her fingers out of my grasp, and says coldly, "I _was_ paying attention, Jack." I stare at her as she continues, "I think you should go," and goes past me, disappearing around the corner.

* * *

I'm a grown woman. If I want to scald my fingers off, I'll damn well scald them off. As I walk into the bedroom, I sigh and sink onto the bed. Still. Did I do the right thing? Do I really want him gone? He's the only person that's bothered with me for months.

It doesn't appear to matter whether I really want him out or not, because he walks in quietly after me. Embarrassment finally flushes on his cheeks when he realizes there's virtually nowhere for him to step where he won't step on something – mostly clothes, but some magazines and books as well. It's not like the kitchen, where he could easily clear off a chair without disrupting anything. My bedroom is a minefield I've memorized, because it's easier to go around the messes than to care enough to clean them up. His gaze rises to meet mine. I quirk an eyebrow. Yeah. Do you still want to save me, hero?

I could swear he's telepathic. His eyes narrow and he straightens his shoulders. He strides over, stepping on my underwear and jeans and a worn copy of _The United States Constitution_. Maybe I should pick that up. Later.

"I asked you to leave."

"No, not really," he says. "You said I should leave. I thought about it, and I don't think I should."

"Oh, really."

Jack sits down next to me, closely. My comfort zone protests, but he breaks through it anyway. I find it hard not to be comfortable around him. I know him. Damn him, I know him.

"Really," he says. "Renee, I know where you are. I want to be here for you."

* * *

_With you…_ The words come unbidden to my mind, startling me. I swallow them back. I can hardly imagine being with anyone again. Well, I couldn't. But the idea's out, and for a split second, I _do_ imagine it: us, her and me, together. Drinking coffee, laughing, walking home, me with my hand on her back, her head on my shoulder. And she's warm and bright, the sassy, sensual individual I'd pictured her to be hiding when I first met her.

Damn it. I close my eyes to block out the personal fantasy. I've had sexual fantasies about her before. She often took the place of faceless women over the past six months. But those kinds of fantasies are nothing, impersonal. Easy to write off. But this newest fantasy? Damn it. That's a personal one that I won't easily forget.

And I should forget it. A relationship is the last thing she needs right now. We could both get hurt and wind up resenting each other.

She probably doesn't even see me like that.

"Don't bother," she suddenly whispers. "It's not worth it."

"You mean _you're_ not worth it."

She looks away. "Yeah."

"That's bullshit." She looks back, eyes wide. Okay, my tone was a little too harsh. I try to soften it as I say, "Renee, you're an attractive, intelligent, caring woman."

Renee snorts. "Right. Maybe I'm smart, but attractive?" She waves her arms. "Yeah, this is all really attractive, Jack."

"Hey. You think all this is who you are? Renee, the mess is just a product of your depression. You think my apartment was spotless and orderly when Teri died? I was a wreck, and it showed."

She doesn't reply. "Look at me," I say. When she meets my eyes, I reach over and touch her cheek. "You are an attractive, intelligent, caring woman," I repeat. "You're in a bad place right now, but that doesn't change who you were…are."

She looks away again. "You're the only one who thinks so."

"I doubt that."

A short bark of laughter escapes her lips. "You do, do you? I have nobody, Jack. I had Larry and Janis, and that was it. And now Janis hates me, and Larry…" She pauses, and then chokes out, "Larry died thinking I'd turned into some kind of monster. And what's worse is that he was right."

I scoot closer than I thought was possible, and wrap my arms around her as she cries. She cried like this in the hospital when Marika died. She was so guilty, so compassionate. I didn't have the time to console her, but I tried to anyway. She shoved me away and said, "What if I don't want to learn to live with it?"

The words have haunted my memory since I read about her attempted suicide. I run my fingers from her shoulder down her arm, and when I reach her wrist, I gently turn it over. White gauze bandages glare up at me.

"Renee?" I ask. "Do you think I'm a monster?"

She pulls back. "No."

"You haven't done anything I haven't done a dozen times. How can you be a monster without me being a monster?"

"Great, now we're both monsters," she says, staring down at her wrist in my hand.

I peel back the bandage until two red, angry lines are visible. A fragile line of a scab has formed in the center of each one. If I so much as brushed them, they'd be bleeding. She cut deep. Deep, and fast. I've tried not to imagine the circumstances under which she took the blade to her wrist. Had she just gotten back from work? Did she put down her briefcase and think, I'm not going back there tomorrow, go into the kitchen and remove a knife from the drawer? Or was she sobbing, tipping back a bottle of beer before she reached for the scissors?

"No," I say as I cover the cuts back up. "We're just human."


	4. Chapter 4

"How bad do these hurt?" Jack asks, his hand travelling up to my fingers.

"Not too bad…"

"C'mon. Let's get them treated."

"Don't worry about it, Jack." I don't do typing or anything that will require direct use of the pads of my fingers, so there's no reason to baby them.

"Humor me," he says. He tugs me to my feet and leads me into the bathroom.

The master bathroom is the worst room in the house. I haven't cleaned it in a month. The trash can's overflowing. Hair, dirt and the occasional smudge of toothpaste line the sink and counter. What isn't visible, at least, is the black ring in the toilet and the brown ring in the bathtub, which is blocked by the shower curtain.

Jack pays the mess no heed. I'm impressed. He turns on the tap and puts my fingers under the cold running water. I hiss at first contact, and feel his eyes lock on me. After a minute or two, though, the water starts to numb the skin, and I relax.

"Where's your first aid kit? In here?" He lowers the knob to stop the flow of water.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," I say.

"The water burned skin off," Jack says, looking critically at my fingers. He reaches for the towel, but it's not on the bar. It's on the floor. It's probably been rotting there for a week… He blinks, and smoothly pats my fingers dry with the bottom of his shirt instead.

Our eyes meet when he looks up, dropping the end of his shirt. He continues to hold my fingers, watching me. It's strange…I never noticed how blue his eyes are…

Something startles me out of our little staring contest, and I realize that he's just waiting patiently for me to tell him where I keep the damn first aid kit. Looking away, I mutter, "It's in a box under the sink."

* * *

She doesn't appreciate me telling her what to do. That much is blatantly obvious. I rummage through the box and pull out a plastic first aid kit, a transparent blue plastic with a red cross on either side. "Will you rub Neosporin on those for me?" I ask.

Renee looks surprised for a moment, but then she says, "Okay." She takes the tube from my hands, unscrews the lid, and rubs several tiny portions over her burned flesh.

I pretend to be preoccupied with the kit, so she doesn't think I asked her to do that just so she feels like she has some resemblance of control over her life. Which, I did… "Here's the gauze…" I say as she caps the tube. I hold up the smallest roll. "May I?"

After a second of hesitation, she nods. I carefully isolate one finger and start rolling the gauze around it, and then I cut, tape, and repeat with the next finger. I work slowly, but not inefficiently. I want to prolong my visit, because I don't know if she'll let me in next time, but I don't want to be obvious about it either.

She stares at her freshly-bandaged fingers. "I'm not sure, but those could be borderline second-degree burns…" I say. I want to recommend that she goes to a doctor. When I was a little kid, my mom took Graem to the hospital when he spilled a boiling pot of spaghetti noodles and burned his feet; those were second-degree burns. Our cook, Cassie, was fired on the spot. Somehow I always felt sorrier for her than for Graem, who wasn't supposed to be fooling around in the kitchen anyway, and knew it.

But I can't say she should go to a doctor. She and I have both seen and or suffered far worse than a few borderline burns on a couple of fingers. Hopefully her pride won't allow her to go to the hospital, because if it doesn't, that means that at least part of her cares about herself. Not her body – bodies heal – but her mind, her personality.

"If you start to see pus, you should get a doctor to prescribe something stronger," I say lamely. "Infected burns get nasty."

She does seem to be appalled at the idea. Her lips purse unhappily. "Yeah," she says in a noncommittal tone.

Well, I suppose that's as much as I can expect.

* * *

I hear a faint beeping coming from outside the bedroom. "Um, I think that's the coffee," I say.

"Lead the way," he murmurs, and I quietly do.

I grab two mugs from a mostly-bare cabinet and pour. "I don't have cream or sugar."

"That's fine. I usually drink it black anyway."

We sip the coffee quietly for a moment. Then I'm talking before I realize it. "What am I supposed to do?"

He studies me. "Live," he says. "You take the life you tore apart, and you stitch it back together whether you want to or not."

You'd expect my next question to be "How?" but it's not. To even my surprise, I ask, "Why?"

It's a good question. Why? Why do I live? Why should I get to live, when others have died because of me? When lives were destroyed because of things I've done? Somewhere in D.C., there's a baby boy without a father, and a disabled woman without her sister. And that's just what I did six months ago.

"Why?" Jack says. "When other people fall down, they have the luxury of giving in to their own permanent hell if they want to. You and I, when we fall, we have to pick ourselves back up. Not because CTU needs us, or the FBI needs us, or the country needs us, but because that's who we are. That's what we do. We pick ourselves up."

"I think my fall paralyzed me, to continue your quaint little metaphor," I mutter. I take a large swallow of coffee without blowing on it; the hot liquid burns my tongue, mouth and my throat.

Suddenly, he cups my cheek. "You're not paralyzed, Renee," he says softly. "You're just stunned from the impact."

* * *

I never thought myself to be poetic, but my comments to her today seem to be largely of the cheesy poetic variety. But, she hasn't kicked me out yet, so something's working. I try to give her a tender smile.

Renee looks down and walks away, to the kitchen window. Well…I can honestly say I've never had this reaction, and I'm not even trying to seduce her. I follow, but stop short a foot behind her. "Renee?" I say, cautiously. She doesn't reply. "Renee?"

"Yeah?" Her voice…it sounds so vulnerable. I feel my chest starting to ache – damn, if she wasn't right. I do have a thing for rescuing people.

"What is it?"

"Why are you here?" she asks.

I'm sure I've answered that before. I pinch my palm before saying, "Because you need help, and I care."

"Why do you care?" It comes out as a whisper. "No one else cares about me. I don't even care about me."

I take her by the shoulders, and turn her around. Her body is pliant and obedient without pause, completely unlike the Renee I remember. "I care because I remember how amazing you were that day," I say. "Because I know that Renee Walker is still in there somewhere, and I want to see her again."

Her eyes move subtly from left to right as she stares into my eyes, and before I can stop her, she grabs my head with both hands and crushes her lips to mine.


	5. Chapter 5

She runs her tongue between my lips. I open my mouth and she delves in. She kisses me and swallows the breath from my lungs. I'm caught off-kilter, and she pushes me back against the wall, thrusting her tongue deeper into my mouth.

I've kissed and been kissed before, but I've never been kissed so desperately. That's what it is. Desperation. Desperation, and a need to feel something. But, still, I feel myself reacting to her. _Damn_ it. This is not what this was about.

I lift my hands to her shoulders and push gently…once, twice…and a third time, a little harder. When our lips part, Renee opens her eyes. Her hands are balled in my shirt. She's breathing heavily, and says, "What?"

Her breathless, husky voice nearly makes me change my mind. I groan. "Renee. We can't do this."

* * *

One minute I was feeling only emptiness, then I felt this overwhelming longing, and I kissed him. And then he kissed me back, and my longing swiftly turned to lust. I felt alive.

And then it ended, just seconds later. "Why?" I ask.

"Because you're still in a dark place, Renee."

His excuse sounds so absurd that I laugh. "No, I see what it is," I say. I step back and hug myself. "You and all your damned, sweet words. You don't actually care about me. I'm just another helpless female you feel obligated to save."

"Hey," he says. That's the sharpest his voice has been today. I look back into his eyes as he closes the distance between us. "I could easily fuck you right now. I could easily fuck away all the darkness. Is that what you want?" Before I can speak or nod he storms on. "Because it shouldn't be."

"Why not?" I whisper.

Jack lifts a hand, which bobs hesitantly in the air before cupping my cheek. "Because in the morning, all the darkness will be back anyway. And if we do it again, it'll just be back again. It can't be killed with passion. And when we fail to kill it with passion, you'll resent me for it, and I don't want that."

"I won't resent you," I say.

"Won't you?"

I open and close my mouth.

What if he's right?

* * *

Renee shudders when she sighs, and her arms tighten around her. "Okay…"

I swallow as she turns and sits down at the kitchen chair I sat in earlier. Her elbows rest on her knees as she hides her face in her hands.

I remember my earlier fantasy about the two of us. I…I want that. The thought surprises me. I want to be with her. But not like that. I want to be more than a sympathy fuck-buddy.

I step forward and kneel in front of her. I pull her hands away from her face, and see remnants of tears on her palms and cheeks. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'm so screwed up."

"Maybe a little," I say, smiling as I brush the tears from her cheeks.

She laughs brokenly. "Aren't you supposed to say, 'no, darlin', you're not screwed up'?"

"Pretending you're not won't help anything."

She sighs again, and buries her face in her hands again. "I know."

I hate that she's hiding her face from me. I don't want her to have to hide anything from me. But…sometimes we need to hide ourselves from the rest of the world, kind of like a scab gives the tender skin beneath a chance to heal. Hesitantly, I press a kiss to the crown of her head, and then I get up and go behind her. "Renee, I do care about you," I say in her ear. "The truth is, I can see us getting together, sometime in the future, when you're ready for it. If you want it."

Renee looks up from her hands, expression frozen in shock. "Really?" she says.

"Really."

She swallows. "You don't know the all the things I've done."

I can't help it. I smirk. "You don't know all the things I've done, either."

With a small huff, she says, "Right. So, what, now we share all our dirty little secrets until we can't stand to look at each other?"

My smirk softens into a smile. I shake my head. "No. Now I go back to my place."

"Oh."

I don't really want to leave, but I think that's best, for both of us. We both need space to breathe. I'm probably the first person she's had over in months. As for myself…we brought up a lot of memories I'd rather not think about, and I need to sort through the rubble of my past without her around. Maybe someday we'll both be healed enough to share our pasts with each other.

"Hey," I say. "How about I come over tomorrow? Help out a little?"

Renee smiles grimly and pushes the newspapers to the side, so that she can lean her elbow on the table. She rests her head in her hand as she eyes me. "You mean, fix the mess that is Renee Walker, starting with the state of my apartment?"

"Something like that," I say, half-smiling. I'm not sure I would have put it quite like that, but that's the basic idea. It's easier to hate yourself less when you're not surrounded by filth and disorder. "How does five o'clock sound?" She nods. I squeeze her shoulder. "I'll see myself out."

* * *

I close my eyes and nod. His hand slides off my shoulder as he walks toward the door. I swallow hard. My eyes squeeze tighter, until I see fuzzy magenta splotches behind my eyelids. I heard the knob turn and my eyes fly open. The chair moans, scratches against the tile. I rush after him.

Jack stops in the doorway, turning back to me with a shocked expression. I stop a few feet in front of him. "Renee?"

"Jack…please don't…"

"Don't what?" he says gently.

"Please don't…don't let me shut you out." I feel a tear sliding down my cheek. I swipe at it furiously. "I…I shut everyone else out. Once you walk out that door, I'll stop feeling again and I'll try to shut you out, too. Please don't let me."

He straightens and meets my eyes unflinchingly. "I give you my word," he says seriously.

His words release a flood of relief. "Thank you," I say. When the next tear rolls, I let it.

Jack nods. "I'll see you tomorrow, Renee."

"At five."

"Yes." He steps back through the doorway, and watches me through the corner of his eye until the door closes and latches.

Alone again. I swallow and close my eyes. I dread the emptiness that's coming. I dread the paradox of not feeling, and thinking I should, but not caring because I can't feel anything. What Jack calls the dark place is going to come back at me and eat me whole.

But that's okay, I realize. I open my eyes and stare at the closed door.

It's okay because I have his word.

* * *

Writer's Note: Thanks for reading and reviewing, guys! This is the end of _When We Fall_. Hope you guys liked it! :)


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